More and more people in America are sick of Halloween becoming Halloweek…
It happens almost every year because All Hallow’s Eve typically falls on a weeknight, which means a pre-Halloween party the weekend before, days of buildup, and sometimes another weekend party.
That’s a lot of candy. That’s a lot of offensive costumes. That’s a lot of Santa-Con-esque excesses. So can we please just agree to move Halloween to the last Saturday in October and be done with it?
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To clarify: I am not anti-Halloween. Nothing brings me more joy than seeing friends dress up (like that time my friend and I were both Barry Gibb, because, let’s face it, who wants to be Robin Gibb?). I am grateful for any excuse to eat fun-sized Snickers. And I recognize that a little kid dressed like an old person is the cutest thing ever. I will even sit through a scary movie and then sit up all night thinking about it. I am happy to do and see all of these things, but I have rule: I do it all…ON HALLOWEEN.
Weekday Halloweens hurt parents, too. Trick-or-Treating starts early, and leaving work isn’t an option. Kids stay up late and eat candy all night, which makes getting to school the next day a difficult task—and being a good parent by limiting sugar intake really isn’t an option either.
Most mothers now work outside of the home, in nearly half of households with a mother and father, both parents are employed full time. So who has time for trick or treating on a Tuesday?
It’s not like we can’t change Halloween to make it whatever we want. It started about a thousand years ago as a Celtic-Pagan holiday that was essentially a spooky harvest festival. In the early 700s it was appropriated by Christians as a day to “pray for the recently departed souls who have yet to reach Heaven.” Then it came to America and, before long, became a consumer-oriented holiday celebrated by people of all religious backgrounds and candy preferences.
If a pagan harvest festival can morph into a corn-syrup-fueled parents’ nightmare, then Halloween can change into whatever we want.
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Source: http://www.newsweek.com/
